Deviates
by readingrainbows
Summary: Why is it always a tragedy? This isn't a tragedy. This is us. There's a difference. Jade


**So, just in case I'm the only one who's noticed, pretty much all any semi-decent writer in this fandom seems to be able to produce is ANGST. **

**And while I'm all for plot devices that pull at the heartstrings and whatnot, the angst overload has recently made me want to plunge my eyeballs into rubbing alcohol. **

**Also, Diddly-Bops episode = fangirling moments like woah.**

* * *

_Deviate (v) to depart from usual or accpeted standards_

She's Jade West, and if there's one thing you should know about her, it's that she's one half of an eternal whole.

And she goes to a through-audition-only school for the performing arts, has an unhealthy attraction to all things scissor-related and, on any given day, will be sure to have enough black eyeliner smothered around her eyes to supply the rest of the female population for the rest of time.

And although all the above information is relevant, it's also really not.

-x-

Jade does not hate Tori Vega. She is intimidated by her. The girl who ambled into their school not too long ago, taking the students and every lead role Jade tells herself she's too good for anyways, in the process.

It's her eyes, Jade thinks, that are just a little bit too kind, and her legs, which are just slightly longer than her own, and the way she's so damn adorably confused all the time.

It's the way she can actually see them together, Tori and Beck, although it repulses her and makes her heart lurch uncomfortably and makes her eyes swim, they might even look_ cute _together.

So she makes nasty comments and glares until her eyes seem to be permanently stuck that way and tries to make Tori Vega see, through every possible way except actually speaking to her, that Beck Oliver is hers and don't you ever think different.

It's not until several long weeks and a play-writing debut later; that Jade realizes Tori is there to help more than hurt her. So she begins to accept Tori, just a little, even giving up her death glares in favour of my-god-you're-an-idiot stares.

But sometimes, when Beck and Tori laugh at a joke she wasn't around to hear, Jade can feel her heartbeat pick up and she slips her fingers into the spaces between his, willing him not to forget her.

-x-

Her clothes are black and her nails are black and the rings around her eyes are black, but despite what her mother tells her, her soul isn't black. Her heart isn't not black.

And this is something she knows for sure. She knows it every time she even so much as glances his way.

And she especially knows it when he glances back, his eyes lighting up when he realizes she's been staring at him, his lips quirking upwards.

She can literally feel the confirmation in her chest as some area on her far left pulls in an oddly pleasant way.

-x-

__

Until the words bleed together and lose their meaning, until she wonders if he only says it because she asked.

Her insecurity is nothing new, but she masks it behind flaming blue eyes and screeching lungs and jealousy and possessiveness and frowns and frowns and frowns until she wonders if there is anything on earth she's truly confident about.

And then it comes to her, like sun bursting brilliantly through the clouds, blinding her by its beauty and bringing with it enlightenment.

It comes in the tall, looming form of Beck, the only boy she's ever loved more than herself, and the only boy who could completely destroy her.

There's no need for her to always be asking for the words to come from his mouth. (Especially when his mouth could be…otherwise occupied) they come from his eyes, from the arm glued around her shoulder, from his tolerance of her perpetually bitter demeanour.

But she never stops asking anyways.

-x-

His mouth is on hers all the time, always soft, always with wonder, like he still can't believe he gets to do this. So she grips at the back of that lovely head of his and presses her lips to his hard, like to tell him she still can't believe he's so stupid and he smiles a little bit, like There You Are Jade, and she pulls back for air.

His mouth is so familiar to her it's startling. She knows every contour of his oral cavity, that his lower lip will always somehow be more chapped than his upper, that he will laugh without fail if she so much as brushes the tip of her tongue against the inside of his cheek, that if she suckles on the side of his mouth hard enough, the resulting groan will be so profound it will send tingles down her spine.

She stares at his mouth, slightly bruised from her kisses and turned up just vaguely on the corners and although they have been passionately kissing for many minutes, it's the smile that makes her breath catch the sharpest.

And she wonders, not for the first time, what in the world this boy is doing with her.

-x-

They've had another shouting match. And as usual, she's mostly shouting and he's mostly looking exasperated. They have it out near her locker and students pass them by without much of a glance, these fights are a daily ritual. But still, out of the corner of her narrowed eyes, she can see them shake their heads, mutter discontentedly to the person next to them.

Beck notices too, and he turns back to her and asks, those beautiful eyes full of apathetic wonder,

"Do you think they're upset by the fact that we're fighting…or that we're still together?"

"The second." She knows the answer without thinking "They think our relationship _sucks_." She punctuates the last word with a particularly brutal glare at a passing freshman and the girl scurries quickly around the corner.

He's quiet and tired and he hopes _she_ doesn't think their relationship sucks. So he slips his index fingers through the two belt loops on the front of her dark-washed jeans and he pulls her to him until their hips bump.

"They're wrong," he says, in that soothing, knowing way of his, "they just don't _get_ us."

His warm hands are firm on her lower back and it feels amazing and familiar, so she rests her chin on his chest and looks up at him through charcoaled eyes and blackened lashes. She listens when he tries to make her understand things.

And, as usual, he's right.

No one really understands.

It's his arm's permanent placement around her shoulders, a constant reminder that he's _right here_. It's his unyielding honesty, the fact that he would never say I love you unless he meant it. It's that he's seen her in all her jealousy, in all her severity, and that he more than accepts her anyway. It's in his patient eyes, his inability to raise his voice, it's the fact that he persisted, that he didn't just shrug those lovely shoulders of his and give up (like _everyone else_) after the first 15 times she turned him away with haughty eyes and an untrusting growl.

And it's her, too. It's the way that she will often only listen to him; it's her "pleases" and sometimes, "thank yous" It's even her jealousy, because she knows that he can do better, that if he ever lets her go, he _will _do better. It's in the way she just stares at him sometimes, like expecting that, within the timeframe of the next time she blinks, he will have vanished and this will all have only been some kind of wonderful dream.

And she feels like she'll burst from emotion, and she doesn't think anyone needs to see _that_, so she turns her head away and presses her cheek against the worn fabric of his undershirt, taking infinite comfort from the steady beat of his heart.

And she murmurs, in that voice she uses when she's sorry and tired and not mad anymore,

"Love you, Babe."

And they're back to being the most perfectly imperfect couple the world has ever seen.

"Well, duh."


End file.
